Category Archives: Buyers’ Sourcing Best Practices

SOPA-thetic: Using an elephant gun to hunt for butterflies

January 19th, 2012

If you were surprised to find Wikipedia offline yesterday, you weren’t alone: many Internet users were unaware of the widespread one-day online protest against SOPA and PIPA, two bills before the US Congress designed to fight online media piracy.

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Sal’s six stages of sourcing: BPO’s Generations

January 14th, 2012

Mike Salvino is Group Chief Executive, Business Process Outsourcing, for Accenture

The BPO industry has been going though an incredible evolution since the first major deals was cast, barely more than a decade ago, that it’s high time we took stock and take a good look at the phases – or generations – through which our industry has progressed. And there are few people who have lived and breathed these generational shifts more closely that Accenture’s BPO leader, Mike Salvino.

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The Sourcing Raj Part II: “You don’t have to be Indian to be a global outsourcing provider!”

January 9th, 2012

Would you kindly stay on the line to complete a brief customer satisfaction survey?

We complete our investigation into the dominance of India in the world of outsourcing, and whether or not the game’s up for non-Indian providers to come back into the picture

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Whoever said outsourcing was becoming a commodity?

January 7th, 2012

Whoever said outsourcing was becoming a commodity?

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Smackdown: Where is BPO going?

January 5th, 2012

Like a typical extended family at Thanksgiving, the buy family and the sell families cussed and discussed about the trends and challenges buffeting BPO. They passed the peas and offered some pretty unbridled opinion and insight. Click to download the highlights

One of the highlights of 2011 was that great web-debate on the Future of BPO where 1,100 people across the globe dialed in to hear from our buy and sell families. Here were the highlights…

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If you were too hungover to join our predictions webcast, here’s the replay and the deck

December 18th, 2011

In case you missed our joint webcast with Ed Caso of Wells Fargo Securities on Friday, fear no more, as here’s the replay

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IBM embellishes its B2B commerce empire… by acquiring Emptoris

December 15th, 2011

Emptoris’ well-regarded user interface and strong brand recognition among the procurement crowd make it an idea mate for IBM’s technology-driven focus and market leading procurement BPO capability. While the integration of Sterling, DemandTec, and Emptoris will take some time to become “smarter commerce”, there will be some immediate upsides.

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Announcing the HfS 50 Sourcing Blueprint Sessions

December 13th, 2011

This is going to be a defining two-day working session for power-brokers of the outsourcing industry, where leading buyers of both ITO and BPO services will confront today’s critical issues impacting outsourcing, to establish a Blueprint for the industry in 2015. And this time, we will have a vendor/buyer face-off session where leaders from six of the major service providers will join the debate.

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@The_Whole_Outsourcing_Industry: Labor arbitrage built your house of cards. #Bubble What’s next?

December 13th, 2011

The outsourcing industry is a labor arbitrage bubble waiting to burst. And today’s smartest buyers and service providers are poised to fatally pop it and build a better future.

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Congratulations to Tony “Governator” Filippone, HfS’ new Head of Research

December 12th, 2011

Our core mantra at HfS has always been to tackle the issues and complexities of global sourcing through the eyes of the buyer. One analyst who has spent nine years of his life doing just that, leading BPO governance for the $62 Billion healthcare payor, WellPoint, is our Governator himself, Tony Filippone. No single person in 2011 has written to – or talked with – more buyers about their governance challenges, and we are delighted to reveal to the world today his elevation to Executive Vice President of HfS’ research team.

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It may be for life, but will there be innovation, as TCS inks the mother of all insurance BPO deals

December 9th, 2011

For better or for worse, for richer, for poorer, until many missed SLAs do us part.

TCS’ insurance services delivery subsidiary, Diligenta, has become wedded to in a 15-year, $2.2bn, 1900 employee life and pensions BPO engagement with the UK’s Friends Life. This represents the largest life and pensions BPO engagement by a considerable margin, eclipsing the $1.1bn Prudential contract awarded to Capita in 2007. We believe this move from TCS signals a sea-change in the industry with regards to the growth strategies and ambitions of the leading BPO providers.

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SAP + SuccessFactors = Great for SAP, but could restrict growth potential for the HR services industry

December 4th, 2011

"I'll show you how I feel about your license model..."

With SAP’s move to “Cloudify” its software portfolio with the $3.4bn acquisition of the darling of HR software, SuccessFactors, we do not believe this is particularly good news for BPO service providers and services clients

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Fed up with cheesy sales presentations? Well, here’s the web event you’ve been waiting for…

December 1st, 2011

So how can you make the sales process smell less like a Wisconsin dairy farm? Easy – simply join us for our next web event

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What are Business Platforms and why they represent the future of outsourcing

November 14th, 2011

"Please mind the innovation gap"... click here to find out what Business Platforms are and they represent the future of outsourcing

The ability to develop some best-in-class processes as “Business Platforms”, whether they focus on horizontal or vertical process clusters, is becoming a real differentiator in the market, as buyers seek more standardized solutions from their outsourcing engagements. The gauntlet being laid out to providers, with these Business Platforms, is their ability to support their clients’ transitions quickly and inexpensively. Simply selling “products” is not the concept of business platforms – it is the provider’s ability to work with their customers to facilitate and support the ultimate business outcomes of managing the processes associated with the Business Platform offering.

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The three tenets of Global Business Services execution: customer alignment, accountability, and economies of scale

November 10th, 2011

So how do you take shared services leaders and blend their expertise with the outsourcing governors? How do you go from fragmented service delivery with multiple points of contact, to a global governance model with a rationalized and centralized administration of third-party service providers?

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Satisfying customers’ needs profitably: can marketing BPO revive marketeers?

November 9th, 2011

CMOs have it tough today, whichever geography or market you look at. They’re stretching dollars for myriad activities in a function that’s undergoing major change. HfS Research’s Reetika Joshi discusses her new report “Marketing BPO Services: Solving the CMO’s Dilemma”

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Why outsourcing professionals must stay in touch with the 99%

November 6th, 2011

Governments are very capable of passing measures very quickly to restrict outsourcing if things get really bad – and they won’t have any choice if the 99% demand it. All outsourcing stakeholders – buyers, providers and advisors – need to focus, more than ever, on helping organizations approach outsourcing as one supporting component of a holistic solution.

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Double-Dip Dynamics, Part II: The new tenets of outsourcing – process standardization, global flexibility and better technology

October 29th, 2011

What is motivating buyers to outsource in this current climate? While eliminating cost is still is a huge fundamental, buyers are even more focused on achieving greater flexibility to scale their global operations as a prime motivating factor. Clearly, many executives are getting more experienced and skilled at driving an sourcing initiative, and are confident they can use the endeavor as a change agent to promote and implement much-needed change in their businesses.

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